Category Archives: Castles

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Bedford Castle

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Bedford Castle

Owing to the defeat of Bedford Castle – ruined as early as 1224 – there are no castles in Bedfordshire with any masonry remnants, if we leave out the late medieval brick ruin of Someries. Nevertheless, the county does maintain some excellent motte and bailey castles, such as Cainhoe and Yelden.

Bedford was one of the burghs carrying weapons against the Danes by King Edward the Elder, Alfred the Great’s son. It is probable that this county town was saddled with a castle in next to no time subsequent to the Norman Conquest, but there is no actual evidence of one until around 1130, when Payn de Beauchamp held it. In 1138, when besieged by King Stephen, its strong keep and curtain are mentioned, the implication being that they were already of stone.

For the duration of the Magna Carta war the castle was seized by Fawkes de Breaute and became the base for that notorious baron’s misdeeds against his neighbors. In 1224 he overreached himself by abducting one of the King’s justiciars and holding him prisoner here. The young Henry III responded by laying siege to the castle in person, bringing with him a tall siege tower, powerful catapults and a contingent of miners to tunnel beneath the curtain.

Every obstacle was one after another battered down or undermined, and when the keep fell the garrison had to admit defeat. A number of them were hanged but De Breaute himself obtained a pardon. The King ordered the total destruction of the castle, as a result of which the walls were demolished and ditches filled in. Only the oval motte remains, near the bridge across the River Ouse, and even this has been truncated. The site, however, is freely accessible to the public and is a good stop on your castle tour.

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Barnwell Castle

Barnwell Castle

Barnwell Castle

On the Duke of Gloucester’s estate at Barnwell can be seen three successive manorial centers in close proximity. First there are the earthworks of a Norman motte And bailey, now hidden in a clump of trees. Then comes the massive stone ruin of Barnwell Vastle, built by Berengar le Moine about 1265-66. It seems that Berengar took advantage of Henry III’s preoccupation with his barons to build a strong adulterine castle. Berengar later sold his new castle to Ramsey Abbey. It is said he was compelled to do so by Edward I as a punishment for building it without a license. Barnwell remained with the abbey until the Dissolution, when Sir Edward Montague purchased it. He erected the present house, Barnwell Manor, nearby.

The castle is an interesting example of thirteenth century military architecture with some delightfully experimental touches. On a smaller scale, it anticipates the great castles that Edward I would build in Wales in the following decades, and though it pre-dates Edward’s coronation by several years, it is a rare English example of a pure Edwardian castle.

An unusually thick curtain, well preserved except for the loss of its parapet and a single breach on the west, surrounds an oblong courtyard. Circular towers project boldly at three angles, the fourth being occupied by a gatehouse. The two northern towers are quite eccentric as they both have a smaller round tower projecting from them, resulting in a figure-of-eight plan. The prime function of these subsidiary towers was domestic rather than military. They contained latrines serving the apartments in the main body of the towers.

The southwest tower has no projections, but its upper floors are square internally for greater domestic convenience. The latrine for this tower was accommodated in a more conventional manner within the thickness of the curtain.

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Barnard Castle

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Barnard Castle

The town takes its name from the castle built by Bernard de Balliot and extended by his son of the same name. Between them they erected a powerful stone castle in the second half of the twelfth century, strongly situated on a rock above the River Tees.

Today the castle is an extensive but very ruinous pile. It possesses an exceptional four baileys, all walled in stone during the period of the two Bernards. From the town of Norman arch – once part of a gatehouse – leads into the northern outer bailey, known as the Town Ward. Much of its curtain still stands as well as the vaulted undercroft of the Brackenbury Tower. The southern outer bailey doubles the size of the castle but its defenses are now fragmentary.

West of the Town Ward are the ditch and curtain of the inner bailey, with two flanking towers added by the Beauchamps. To reach the inner bailey it is necessary to pass through a middle ward, then turn sharp right over a deep ditch hewn out of solid rock. This succession of defenses is quite advanced for the twelfth century. Once inside the inner bailey the dominant is the Balliol Tower or keep which projects from the curtain.
This cylindrical tower of ashlar is actually an early addition to the castle, though it could still be the second Bernard’s work as he survived until 1199.

As keeps go, it is a bit of a fraud, because it was not isolated from the rest of the castle. It was entered directly from the vanished solar at first floor level, and the triangular spur projecting from the keep is not a defensive feature but merely a wedge between the two. All the same, the keep is the only part of the castle to survive more or less complete and an unusual domed vault covers its ground floor.

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Ashby Castle

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Ashby Castle

Ashby-de-ka-Zouche takes its name from the Zouche family whose line died out in 1399. In 1464, Ashby was one of the estates granted to William, Lord Hastings, as a reward for his services to Edward IV. Hastings held the office of Lord Chamberlain and, in 1474, he obtained a license to crenellate his houses at Ashby and Kirby Muxloe.

During the Civil War, Henry Hastings strengthened the castle with earthen redoubts and turned it into the chief center of Royalist resistance in the county. The garrison endured over a year of siege before surrendering on honorable terms in February, 1646. The Hastings Tower was slighted by order of Parliament, but the rest of the castle remained habitable into the eighteenth century. It is now all ruined.

Before Lord Hastings, there was only a manor house here, though it was a fine one in keeping with the status of the Zouches. Hastings made the older buildings the core of his mansion. They form a range centered upon a late Norman hall, flanked by the solar and a buttery and pantry wing. In the fourteenth century, the massive kitchen was added to the complex. Lord Hastings modernized these buildings and extended the range with the addition of a fine chapel in the prevailing Perpendicular style.

Following the license to crenellate, he built a curtain around the manor house and raised the mighty square tower, which is named after him. The curtain cannot have been a very formidable obstacle – only a portion survives-but the Hastings Tower is still impressive. It is one of the best examples of a late medieval tower house, providing its owner with a dignified but secure residence. It stands detached from the manorial buildings, facing them across the courtyard. The tower is built in very fine ashlar masonry.

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Allington Castle

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Allington Castle

Allington Castle stands beside the River Medway about a mile north of Maidstone. This beautiful, moated castle seems perfect, but the perfection has been contrived in modern times.

Henry II destroyed a Norman castle after the revolt of 1173-74. The low mound immediately southwest of the present castle represents the motte and some herringbone masonry is visible in the curtain facing it. Other than that, Sir Stephen de Penchester, Constable of Dover Castle and Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports built the existing structure. He obtained license to crenellate in 1291 and the original survives.

His castle is characteristic of the Edwardian age but is not uncompromisingly military like the contemporary castles of Wales. In design, it reflects the quadrangular layout that was becoming popular, but the rear bows outwards in a gentle curve and the distribution of towers is quite irregular.

Five D-shaped towers of different sizes project from the curtain, though one or two others existed originally. Solomon’s Tower, at the south corner, is the largest and may be regarded as an early tower house. There is also a gatehouse flanked by simple, half-round turrets; the machicolations above the gateway are modern.

Some ruins of barbican survive on the far side of the moat. The range on the southwest side of th courtyard, known as the Penchester Wing, may incorporate a slightly older manor house. However, once the castle was built, the main apartments stood opposite, centered on a hall that still exists but is largely a reconstruction. Only its fifteenth century porch is authentic.

In 1492, Allington was granted to Sir Henry Wyatt in recognition of his loyalty to Henry VII. He upgraded the castle by building the narrow range which divides the courtyard into two unequal parts. Its upper floor forms a long gallery. The picturesque, half-timbered house within the smaller enclosure also dates from the Wyatt period.